Neckarsteinach - History

History

The earliest human habitation of what is now Neckarsteinach presumably took place in prehistoric times, for the water- and wood-rich area was ideal for hunting and fishing, and afforded a place sheltered from the cold north and east winds. In the 7th century, the area around Neckarsteinach belonged to the Lobdengau, and passed along with it to the high monastery at Worms, when its fiefholder Bligger von Steinach was first mentioned. Worms or Bligger and his sons and grandsons build the four Neckarsteinach castles, whose history is so tightly bound to the town’s.

In the 14th century, the town was surrounded with defensive walls by the Landschad family of Steinach, turning the Vorderburg (one of the castles) and the town together into an enclosed fortification. Nevertheless, the town itself was only half owned by the keepers of the Vorderburg, while those of the Hinterburg (another of the castles) owned the other half. In 1377, Neckarsteinach was mentioned as a town for the first time, and at the same time it became an “open house” of Count Palatine Ruprecht, who could then use it in case of a feud against anyone other than the Bishop of Worms as though he were the town’s fiefholder. In 1381 the first town hall was built, and in the early 15th century, Neckarsteinach received a town charter, which in the years that followed was changed and expanded. The oldest preserved town charter dates from 1537.

Since Hans III Landschad von Steinach became Lutheran in 1522, the Reformation was already fully in place in Neckarsteinach quite early on. In 1526, the Lutheran preacher Jakob Otter was working in town.

In the Thirty Years' War, the town suffered heavily. The Catholic League under Tilly, after conquering Ladenburg in the autumn of 1621 also took Neckarsteinach, whence the Dilsberg mountain fortress across the river was besieged in April 1622. After retreating for a short while to Sinsheim, the Catholic troops came back for the Battle of Wimpfen and quartered themselves in the town, where the Plague then broke out. In 1631, the Bavarian occupation troops were driven out by Swedish troops, before, in 1634, there were Imperial troops in town. Then once more came another wave of the Plague.

After the Landschad family of Steinach died out in 1653, the Bishoprics of Worms and Speyer at first oversaw the fief, with the latter living at the Hinterburg. In 1657, the episcopal fief was given to Wolf Heinrich Metternich von Burscheid, who had kinship with the Archpishop of Mainz, and who also acquired the allodial properties from the Landschads’ legacy. Metternich was old-school – that is to say, Catholic – and encouraged other Catholics to come and settle in town. The Evangelical church in Neckarsteinach therefore ended up housing up to three denominations from 1662 to1908. In the Nine Years' War (1688–1697), French, Saxon, Brandenburgish and Bavarian troops passed through the Neckar valley and quartered there and are said to have made contributions.

After 1685, many Huguenots – known locally as Welsche – who had been driven out of France for their beliefs, came to settle in Neckarsteinach. They were clothmakers and tanners, and with their skills, the town underwent an upswing offsetting some of the losses from the wars that had taken their toll.

In the early 18th century, Neckarsteinach was quarters and a field hospital site in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714), the War of the Polish Succession (1733–1738) and the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48) for troops engaged in these wars.

In 1699, ownership of Neckarsteinach passed by matrilineal inheritance to Caspar Hugo von Metternich zu Müllenark. His heirs later pledged the ownership of Neckarsteinach in 1738 to the baronial von Hundheim heirs, who were likewise set up as local lords once it became clear that the Metternichs could no longer redeem their pledge. Each lord then hired his own Schultheiß (roughly, “sheriff”), resulting in bitter quarrels, not only between the lords, but also among the townsfolk, over just who was in charge. Only in 1750 did Hugo Franz Wolfgang Metternich manage to allay the town’s concerns by uniting lordly authority in himself. He, however, died only four years later, whereupon both the Electorate of the Palatinate and the Bishopric of Worms laid claim to the town, each taking palpable measures to ensure its claim. The town passed first to the Electorate of the Palatinate, though through Imperial mandate it was given to the monasteries at Worms and Speyer in 1763. With mediatization in 1803, Neckarsteinach became part of Hesse.

In 1842 and 1843, the state road from Eberbach to Heidelberg was built, for which the town wall had to be breached. In 1878 chain-driven shipping began on the Neckar, and the next year, the Neckartalbahn (railway) reached town.